A Critic Travels The Country With His Opinions In Tow

January 23, 2005|By Chauncey Mabe Books Editor

During the past 12 months I've done as much traveling as in the previous decade. New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Key West -- and in each town, given that I'm an entertainment journalist, I've visited museums and other cultural venues at every opportunity.

For a critic, travel is always a sort of busman's holiday. The cultural curiosity, the relentless generation of opinions, and the general egomania that go into the makeup of an arts writer are not things that are easily turned on and off. In Key West, I was covering the literary seminar, but I was just as helplessly alert and critical, though off the clock, in those other cities.

It makes no difference that I'm often no more informed about subjects outside my specialties -- books, and to a lesser extent, movies, TV and country music -- than the average consumer. I know what I think, and it seems imperative that you, too, soon know what I think.

Yes, I'm aware the character traits that come in handy for a critic sometimes make me overbearing and hard to be around. More than once my perorations on the subtextual significance, of say, While You Were Sleeping or Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle were interrupted by: "Geez, Chauncey, it was just a movie!" Good or ill, for me there is no such thing as "just a movie," or "just a TV show" or "just a CD."

Every work of art, pop or fine, is a matter of momentous import. Or at least my reaction to it is.

Sometimes this restless and involuntarily judgmental turn of mind provides an opportunity for pleasures unplanned. Most often this occurs when it is forced upon me that my knee-jerk opinions are badly in error. In November, for example, while visiting an old friend in Charlotte, N.C., we went over to the Mint Museum of Art, which, it so happened, was the final stop on the recent tour of Andrew Wyeth's famous series of "Helga" pictures.

Now, I've know about Wyeth since I was in high school, where my classmates and I were invited to admire slides of his early painting, Christina's World. Since the Helga pictures, painted in secrecy over 14 years, became public knowledge in 1985, I've seen them reproduced in magazines and books; so, needless to say, I'd formed an opinion of them and their creator, which ran along the lines of: Wyeth is a great draftsman and illustrator, but his paintings don't really add up to fine art.

That I've had no training whatsoever in art history did not deter me from sharing this view with anyone who would listen. "Pretty pictures," I'd say, "devoid of content."

The instant I walked into the first gallery at the Mint, I saw my mistake. The Helga pictures, seen in the flesh, so to speak, displayed a depth of human complexity impossible to convey in reproduction. Only standing before the actual pictures could I see that Wyeth's technique, far from consisting of simple representation of image, was made up of brusque brush strokes, leaving many pictures looking half-finished, and others almost abstract, although you could always see the image of Helga and her surroundings.

Did I mind being proved wrong? No. My comeuppance was more than compensated by the feelings of transfiguration and catharsis I received looking at these pictures. They had a power that seemed almost magical. I was reminded anew that when you look at art -- real art, whether painting or music or literature-- it looks back into you. For the rest of my life, the mere thought of the Helga pictures will be a source of pleasure.

But will this lesson stop me from making spot critiques of every picture I see, every TV show I watch, every piece of music I hear? Not likely. Bring them on, and if you like, I'll tell you what I think. Consider it my occupational hazard.

Chauncey Mabe can be reached at cmabe@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4710.